Shoplifting inspiration @PhotoLondon

I went to Photo London looking for a casual dose of photography, but I accidentally walked out with a pocketful of ideas for my painting studio. It turns out the most exciting corners of the fair were the ones where the cameras stopped trying to document reality and started behaving like abstract artworks.

The emerging photographers' section was a goldmine of pure experimentation. I was obsessed with Tjitske Oosterholt’s distressed Polaroid grids which were a brilliant, messy collision of glossy, fractured surfaces and deep, tarnished voids. Silvia Rosi’s work practically dismantled the frame, mutating into hyper-saturated, molten liquid landscapes. Then there was Emile Gostelie, who slices a single photographic print into strips and reassembles it into these vibrating, architectural puzzles.

I definitely didn't expect a photography fair to leave me wanting to get back and experiment with my wood panels, but the energy of these pieces is very likely to bleed straight into my next work. Watch this space, or shall I say a frame?